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War in Korea May Be Inevitable

by Barry Briggs

Updated March 11, 2003

Regarding North Korea, the conventional wisdom in Washington, shared by most pundits, holds that we should pursue a policy of containment and sanctions, accompanied by forceful negotiation as North Korea begins to feel the effects of international isolation.

This approach, based upon a dangerous ignorance of North Korean culture and history, is destined to fail. That is serious, because the United States cannot tolerate such a failure: North Korea today possesses crude nuclear weapons, and within a decade will have intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of delivering those weapons to the American heartland.

No other state poses such a clear and present danger to the United States: unchecked, North Korea could vaporize Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles as soon as 2010.

The stakes are very high indeed.

Why Sanctions Will Fail

Sanctions will not work against Pyongyang for several reasons. First, it is not clear that in such circumstances sanctions have ever worked: certainly those enacted against Iraq have had little impact on its bellicosity.

Second, North Korea has always prided itself on its isolation and its independence. In the 1950's Kim Il-sung, the rogue state's brilliant, charismatic, and ruthless founder, and father of current leader Kim Jong-il, created an entire state religion based around the concept of juche, meaning self-reliance. The elder Kim dictated that North Korea would never be dependent upon any other nation - certainly not the capitalist West, and not even its own allies at the time, the USSR and China.

To the student of juche, globalization is anathema. Starvation, economic privation: to the North Korean Communists, these are the prices of autonomy and self-determination. Sanctions will merely stiffen their resolve.

Third, no current government -- including Iraq, Sudan and Saudi Arabia -- has a more despicable record on human rights than North Korea. The testimony of the crew of the American warship Pueblo, captured in international waters in 1968, and then tortured into confessions of spying, is one data point. The bombing of KAL flight 688, planned by the North Korean government and executed by its operatives, is another. That citizens caught stealing food in that famine-ridden state are summarily shot is yet another.

Most shocking are the tales of starving North Korean refugees returned by an unsympathetic China to their homeland. Branded as traitors, these unfortunates are thrown into concentration camps of unspeakable horror. Women giving birth in prison are forced to suffocate their newborn babies; or, their infants are tossed into a dumpster -- if they cry too loudly, they are knifed by prison guards.

All these atrocities are well documented.

Fourth, North Korea's government is architected for war. "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il himself is not, strictly speaking, the formal head of state (his dead father is President for Eternity) -- the younger Kim, de facto head of state, holds the title of Chairman of the National Defense Commission. Chairman Kim presides over an enormous military: one million men, one of the largest armies in the world. The overwhelming majority of these forces, brainwashed, well-armed, and well-trained, sit just north of the border with South Korea -- which partly motivates the South's aim of stalling any confrontation as long as possible.

Cold War Redux

In many ways, North Korea is an anachronism: a 1930's-style Communist state, with purges, gulags, Five Year Plans, and Party Congresses, all modeled after Stalinist Russia -- but here, with us now, in 2003.

And that, of course, explains their shrill tone and duplicitous negotiation. Any student of the Cold War (and especially the Korean War) will recognize a familiar pattern in Kim's diplomacy: shout and scream, then in the end give an inch instead of a yard. Naïve Western diplomats then pronounce a great breakthrough when the Communists make even the tiniest and most insignificant concession.

The Case for War

The case for war with North Korea is an easy one to make. As a nuclear, terrorist state, able to reach Hawai'i and Alaska with Taepo-dong missiles today, and the West Coast within a few years, North Korea represents a far greater threat to the security of the United States than any nation on Earth; certainly more dangerous than Al Qaeda and arguably more than Iraq. Unrepentant Kim and his evil goons commit genocide against their own population; what international commerce they have is based upon supplying weapons such as Scud missiles to other outlaw nations, and the proceeds are used not to feed their starving masses, but to keep Kim in $600 Hennessey cognac and Mercedes-Benz automobiles.

In sum, North Korea is a spectacularly evil state. The breathtaking dimensions of its crimes against humanity can easily be compared against, and in some cases surpass, those of Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Pol Pot's Cambodia, or Hutu Rwanda. Its cruelty staggers the civilized mind.

A War Wouldn't Last Long

Militarily, a new Korean conflict will be difficult, but not nearly as hard as the first Korean War. For all their bluster, for all their men in arms, North Korea's military is primitive compared to that of its southern neighbor, and insignificant measured against that of the United States. As the first Gulf War, in which Iraq's vaunted Republican Guard essentially collapsed before the American onslaught, demonstrated, numbers are no match against the ferocity and technology of the US military arsenal.

In fact, it's worth recalling that in the first Korean War, Douglas MacArthur very nearly obliterated the North Korean People's Army -- in very rapid order. In June, 1950, a war-weary US was caught off guard by the surprise North Korean invasion. But in September a massive Allied force landed at the port city of Inchon, and by November, the People's Army was all but defeated.

At that point, had the Chinese not intervened, the Korean War would have lasted a scant six months. But Mao Zedong, fearing a US presence on his northern border, sent 300,000 "volunteers" across the Yalu, and the war dragged on for a miserable three years, finally ending in a stalemate.

China Would Likely Welcome a New North Korea

Today, China is far more likely to support a regime change in North Korea. Kim's murderous government, which has forced tens of thousands of starving Korean refugees across the border into Manchuria, has created a huge problem for the Chinese (indeed, there are rumors that China now wants to build an extension to the Great Wall to seal off North Korea). Indeed, North Korea has few friends in the international community, and certainly none that would come to its aid should it be threatened.

America's goal in a new Korean War is quite straightforward: remove Kim Jong-il and his atrocious government, pacify and disarm the North Korean military, and hand political control over to the democratically elected government of the South. This should pose no threat to China; indeed, the massive aid virtually guaranteed the North once Kim Jong-il's government has been exterminated will halt the exodus of Koreans across the border. Having removed Kim Jong-il, the US should guarantee China that it will maintain no permanent military presence north of the 38th Parallel, the historic dividing line between North and South -- in effect, maintaining the status quo ante bellum with respect to American forces.

The Risks

Perhaps the greatest risk will come in the first hours of the war, when Seoul, a densely populated city of ten million, lying just thirty-five miles from the DMZ, is vulnerable to artillery attack from the North. Estimates suggest that the North, with a formidable array of guns just above the border, could rain as many as 500,000 shells on Seoul -- in the first hour of a conflict.

In all likelihood, however, this nightmare scenario can be prevented. First, the order to start such a bombardment could only come from Kim Jong-il himself; eliminating his ability to give this order -- saying, by destroying his communications facilities -- would delay or prevent the shelling.

Second, it is likely that South Korean and American intelligence have located and track most if not all of the artillery installations. A massive, stealthy preemptive air attack using modern weapons such as Daisy Cutters, for maximum destruction, or cruise missiles, for precision, could eliminate this threat before Kim even knows to issue his order.

Finally, it's not entirely clear to what extent an order to shell Seoul would actually be followed. While this is certainly the largest unknown, North Korea's internal and external propaganda machines make it clear that they regard South Koreans as brothers and sisters; the real enemy is the US. To follow that logic, why, then, would they launch a massive attack on their own countrymen? Even if they do, would a propaganda campaign by us -- leaflets and the like, a la Iraq today -- cause some North Korean gunners to hesitate before killing relatives?

Neither the US nor South Korea can remain complacent. But we should not be cowed by North Korea's rhetoric -- or its artillery.

Japan, similarly, a historical archenemy of Korea, faces missile attack; again, however, preemptive attack by Stealth bombers and cruise missiles should minimize, if not eliminate this threat.

It's worth reiterating that no two nations stand to reap greater rewards from the elimination of Kim's regime than South Korea and Japan: a few hours' risk for a new era of peace and security seems a good bargain.

A New Era Dawns in Northeast Asia

The result, then, of this brief conflict: a free and democratic Korean peninsula, one in which families are reunited after a half century, in which all its citizens live in peace, prosperity, and security. More importantly for us, the United States and the entire world will be forever rid of this threat and this evil. As in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Kuwait, we will have performed an absolute moral good, and we, and the world, will be better for it.

Can This War Be Prevented?

While such a war can be postponed for now, it can only be prevented through substantive structural changes to the North Korean government and its policies. Obviously, North Korea must immediately halt its programs of nuclear weapons, and all other forms of weapons of mass destruction; simultaneously it must embark on a program of demilitarization. Its soldiers should go home, and plow their fields, open stores, teach their children. For once and for all North Korea must come off of a war footing.

But that is not enough. Kim must open his country, to visitation, trade, journalists, and -- above all -- commit North Korea to a free, unrestricted flow of information with the rest of the world. This means, for example, that North Korean citizens, whose radios are fixed to the state broadcasting stations, should be able to see CNN on television as freely as anyone else on the planet. As the North Korean people learn more of the outside world, are exposed to their families in the South, and Americans and Chinese and other foreigners, they will, as the Soviet and East German and Polish peoples before them, demand very much more from their government. They will learn that free peoples need never starve, or freeze. They will realize they can be part of the economic miracle that is South Korea.

Perhaps, even, they themselves will cause a regime change.

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